Noora Alsaid often thinks about what it would be like to build a snowman on the planet Mars.

To many, her “dream” may seem incredible, even if the human race manages to send a manned mission to the Red Planet, but Alsaid knows a few things that many of us do not know, since she is a planetary scientist from the University of Colorado. , and its work is entirely based on data from a NASA spacecraft orbiting Mars.

Alcade is exploring the polar regions of the nearby planet and the strange molecules suspended in its atmosphere, so they can be sure it’s snowing on Mars.

Winter is twice as long

Just like Earth, Mars has seasons, and during its winter, which lasts twice as long as Earth’s, ice crystals fall from its clouds to the surface.

This may seem incredible, given that Mars is known for its dryness, but the Martian atmosphere, which is much thinner than Earth, is dominated by carbon dioxide. Under the most unfavorable conditions, carbon dioxide changes state and turns from a gas into small cube-shaped crystals of dry ice, which is too heavy to “fly” in the Martian sky, and therefore falls as snow, forming small piles on the surface of Mars. Red Planet.

Carbonic “snow”.

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has been orbiting Mars for more than 15 years, has detected carbon dioxide on the surface. However, scientists have no photographs or videos of the snowfall, only recordings using laser technology and observations at wavelengths invisible to the eye.

Snow accumulates mostly near slopes such as crater rims, Sylvain Piqué, a researcher at NASA’s Gas Engine Laboratory, which also studies Mars, told The Atlantic.

He believes enough snow is accumulating on the Red Planet for a hypothetical visitor to Mars to have a reason to wear snowshoes.

“Snow can be a process on all worlds with an atmosphere,” Piqué says. “Finding out how it works can tell us a lot about planets – what shapes their surface, how they evolve and what they eventually become.”

Scientists believe that a few billion years ago, Mars was more like the Earth – warm, with real lakes and seas. Perhaps then more snow fell with large flakes of frozen water, and the influence of these phenomena could leave indelible marks on the poles of the planet.

Source: Atlantic